22 The Late Chief Justice Boger B. Taney. 



On the other hand, following the plan he recommends, and 

 studying the law distributively, in its application to subjects 

 and transactions as they arise in the ordinary course of life, 

 as a system of principles founded in reason and justice and 

 public policy, even an ordinary man may get on with some 

 success. The question is interesting. How can a man 

 grasp and appropriate the reason and spirit of the law ? 

 A verbal answer may be easily given: it can be done by 

 drawing largely upon the fountains of the law, by deep in- 

 sight into the nature and wants of man, as an individual 

 and as a member of society; and by an earnest inquisition 

 into the intent and purpose of the law. It can be done as 

 Kent did it, and Marshall and Mansfield; it requires expe- 

 rience, the wisdom of practical knowledge ; it is gained 

 through all the powers of the mind, preeminently through 

 the moral sense. 



Mr. Taney was admitted to practice in the spring of 

 1799, after a clerkship of three years. He was now twenty- 

 two years of age, ambitious of distinction, full of courage 

 and high hopes. He had witnessed the professional efforts 

 of many distinguished lawyers, Luther Martin, William 

 Pinkney and several others, who held almost equal rank 

 with them, and he aspired to a like eminence. And yet 

 we find him, on his own confession, so oppressed with a 

 species of morbid sensibility that he could not rise to address 

 a jury or an audience with calmness and self possession. 

 This quality, this susceptibility to the influences that con- 

 verge upon the advocate in his highest efforts at the bar, 

 is worthy of note ; he was never able to conquer it. Every 

 address, every argument cost him an effort of his firm and 

 resolute will. 



He was tall and slender, and his health was infirm from 

 his earliest years; in his later years, his frame became 

 very much attenuated. 



Soon after his admission to the bar, he was chosen from 



